First thing, American subs was much biger then German subs (But not so good, americans was much better for comfort for the crews, the germans was faster and could dive much deeper).
Back in the early '50s, I served on a WWII boat, USS Cobia (SS245). After refitting, I remember us going down to a test depth of 300 feet and getting back up really FAST once that test was done. When I read about the U-boats going down to 600 feet, it was quite a surprise.
You're right on the comfort level - we even had air conditioning. When I was transferred to the USS Picuda (SS382), she was being converted to a snorkel boat up in Portsmouth, NH. We heard about "some old German sub" being berthed nearby, so we went to take a look. She was rusty and had long streamers of seaweed streaming from her hull and looked pretty sad. It was the U-505, which later went on display in Chicago.
We were stunned to see how primitive things were - their diving wheels and vents were all operated manually while ours were hydraulically activated. We did an emergency loss-of-hydraulics simulation dive one time and it was pretty strenuous to heave on the handles to open them. We had a length of pipe to slip over the regular handle to give us more leverage. We had nine compartments and could still surface if one was flooded. The U-505 had, I believe, five, and if one flooded, you were gone. One thing we got a kick out of was that despite the spartan living conditions, the officers' wardroom had some kind of fancy wood trimming, like mahogany.
We came away with a grudging admiration for the guys who went to war in those primitive boats (by our standards) and marveled that they did so much damage with them.
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